About Me
Skatestop began its operation in June of 1995. Skatestop was originally opened as a inline skating rental shop servicing beachgoers in a tourist town. Skatestop began for this reason.My name is Craig from Skatestop. I am a certified (IISA-International Inline Skating Association) Inline Skating instructor. I was certified in 1994 to teach skaters how to skate. I was amongst the first 100 in the world to be certified as a inline skating instructor, and became known for teaching notables in various areas of the country. I went to Ocean City Maryland on vacation in 1994 and was interested in the skating scene. I went to one shop that actually sold skates. I asked them if they offered lessons if I bought skates. They said no but you can learn outside on the 4 lane highway. There is a bus lane that is allowed for runners, bikers, and skaters. I thought that was dangerous for a first timer to have that only option in this area. I decided I wanted to offer new skaters a friendly way to learn that was safe. So, I opened a storefront, as a skating school. I would teach 5-20 skaters at a time who signed up from promotions by flyer. I also was featured in weekly columns in local newspapers with skating tips. New skaters who signed up for my class would go to the other shop in the area and rent skates, and then I would teach them. I however realized that I could not continue doing this and survive financially because the rent at a beach resort in the summer was thousand of dollars a month. So, I had to offer other things so that I could continue to do what I loved most. I bought 10 pairs of skates to get started at retail price to get started and rented them. Customers I taught how to skate trusted me, and wanted to buy from me. However, they would have preferred to get new skates. They did buy my rental skates most of the time. However, because I felt like I was not giving my customer all that I could I bought some new skates for sale as new skates. My skates sold out fast and customers began to want to want other accessory items. So then we began doing retail. In the offseason, I did not have anything to do in the offseason/winter, so in 1996 I began advertising in international skating magazines with quarter page ads. This is before the internet was a viable option for doing business. No ads at the time referred to email address or website. We received calls from skaters looking for a tee shirt or some bearings or skates, and wel did whatever we could to do to meet those needs. We would special order anything, and do whatever it took to please our customers because we were actually competing against catalog companies at the time, and we were at a disadvantage because we did not have a catalog.Then when the internet became an acceptable method of doing business in 97, a telephone customer from Singapore who liked our personalized service, actually made an entire website free of charge that was customized using html computing, which was very labor intensive. We were so appreciative of this skater, his name is Shuhuang. We then revised our site in 2000, and this is our current site. Now we are known within our industry to be within the top ten in sales for the brands that we sell. We hope to continue this growth and would appreciate any feedback that you could offer us on how we can improve. Please email us from the contact icon at the top of any page. Thank you for taking the time to learn about our company. Have a great day!
